color management

[biggin]

Does anyone know what the correct setting would be for color management using photoshop elements 2 when you plan to send the files to be printed at an online lab such as shutterfly or mpix?

[BDM]

I think your best bet would be to ask them. They have a standard way of doing things and should be able to tell you what they prefer.

Bruce

[Scottes]

Often enough I've found that many places can't even answer this question. (Including calls to a couple "Pro" printing places.) If they can't answer or don't list the color settings then I'd go with sRGB and a small test run. If the image was *really* important I'd find another printer, because the lack of knowledge on color profile scares me - they should know this info, and should prominently list it.

[canon2od]

Perhaps a test with different settings using the same photo, then see what setting you like best.

[chtgrubbs]

Check this site: http://www.drycreekphoto.com

They can supply a color profile for most of the popular printing houses and have instructions on how to apply it.

[slin100]

Generally, you should set the Color Settings in Photoshop Elements to Full Color Management. This will make Photoshop work in the Adobe RGB colorspace but will honor the colorspace of the image file. If the image is tagged as sRGB, Photoshop will work in sRGB. If it's tagged as Adobe RGB, it will work in Adobe RGB.

I'm pretty sure that Shutterfly expects sRGB images. I've never used mpix but I think they expect sRGB, too. This can become a problem if your images are tagged as Adobe RGB because there is no direct facility in Photoshop Elements to convert to sRGB. I just read, however, about a trick of opening two images, one tagged as sRGB and one tagged as Adobe RGB, and dropping one onto the other. Photoshop Elements, apparently, will convert the image data of the source colorspace to the colorspace of the target image. Sounds clunky, but, it sounds like it will work.